Master Thesis Seminar: Implementation and Evaluation of Design by Contract in an Interface Definition Language
Date: February 11, 2009 (Wednesday) at 10:15
Martin Trulsson presenterar sitt exjobb "Implementation and Evaluation of Design by Contract in an Interface Definition Language"
Examinator:
Martin Höst
Abstract:
When software systems are developed there is a major focus on quality. The customers who buy a software system expect it to be working flawlessly all the time, and therefore the software developers must always work on increasing the quality of their product. In an interface definition language, methods that can be invoked by other parts of a system are defined. Today it is possible to write comments for a method but there is no formalized way to specify the constraints of a method. Design by contract is a methodology which enables contracts to be written for a method. A contract means certain conditions that must be fulfilled before and after the execution of the method. This thesis describes a possible solution of how design by contract may be introduced in an interface definition language. It presents how contracts can be adapted to the specific features of idl and the differences that exist between a solution based on, for example, an object oriented programming language and an interface definition language. The thesis also contains an empirical evaluation of design by contract from the viewpoint of different developers. The evaluation studies how the work of a developer is changed when the features of design by contract is introduced into a system, and the difficulties it brings. The work indicates that developers will get benefits from having contracts on the methods in a system, and these benefits are looked into in more detail during the evaluation.
Room: E:2116
Last modified Dec 9, 2011 12:57 pm by Mikael.Antic@cs.lth.se
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